Colourwork Progress

I’m truly inspired by everything Crystal makes, she is a knitting genius and the only reason I know how to knit today. When she last visited me in Toronto she was working on a pair of Kate Gilbert’s Bird in Hand mittens (rav link) and they were mesmerizing. I became a bit obsessed with them actually, especially the braided rows. I stalked a bunch of mitten patterns with braids on Ravelry but in the end the Bird in Hand pattern was too pretty and I decided it should be my first stab at colour work.

Bird In Hand - Palm

I wasn’t quite sure I could muster the stamina or skill to make it through a whole pair so I picked some pretty inexpensive Cascade 220 that I found at Lettuce Knit in Kensington Market. The pattern seemed like it was calling for some rich earthy colours but in the end the electric blue and purple called my name. After a couple false starts with various gauge issues I’m one mitten down! I’m hoping some blocking will fix a few of the tension issues throughout.

Crystal gave me some great advice about colourwork and then pointed me to this video tutorial at All Buttoned Up which demontrates how to wrap stitches when you have floats.

As for the actual knitting, I hold the background colour in my right hand because that is my normal one. I hold the foreground colour in my left hand because that is my odd one and the tension is looser. Looser tension means the stitches will show up on the front more pronounced, which is why I use that hand. Make sure to never twist, and knit as you normally would taking the yarn from whatever hand you need to to get the right colour.
Crystal provided this additional helpful bit of information:

A little helpful note: one yarn will always be “lower” than the other yarn in the row. Like, if you look at the back of your knitting, mine always has the yarn I had on the left under or lower than the yarn on the right. This will help you never twist and switch your foreground/backgrounds. If they all of a sudden switch, it means you reversed your back/foreground colours.